It is known that biological materials, for example plant material, are ground manually in different quantities in order to obtain plant powder. This plant powder can be used to perform expression profiling, polysome profiling, enzyme profiling, phosphor-proteomics and metabolite profiling, which are needed to perform research work in this area. However, each of the preparing steps and research steps were performed manually by using manual tools for grinding the plants and for select defined portions of the obtained powder in order to perform the mentioned research tests.
There is a need to support these research steps by technical automation, since the number of biological materials to be tested is still increasing.
Because of the characteristics of the biological material to be examined it is necessary to perform the working steps at cryotemperatures, e.g. at −60° C., which results in a complicated handling of the different steps to be performed manually.
Therefore, it is an object of the present invention, to provide a system and a method for producing portions of a powder from at least one biological material at cryotemperatures that enables the automatic performing of working steps without any manual support.